Wednesday, April 7, 2010

English poets: what's so great about Southey? Lovin' Keats though

I finally see what Lord Byron meant in that excerpt from Don Juan.  Even the poetry book I'm reading the stuff out of (A Treasury of Great Poems: English and American, with the lives of the poets selected and integrated, by Louis Unlermeyer.  Printed 1942 by Simon & Schuster) seems to think Robert Southey's pretty lame.
On the other hand, I wonder why the Academic Decathlon competition didn't include Keats; he's way better than Southey.  I really like that first work of his, "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer".  I mean, I can totally sympathize with Keats's fascination with the Greek culture.  It's like me and Japan! >.<  LOL, except he was a much better fanboy, and I'm just a silly otaku.
Here's the poem I like the best so far:

"When I have fears that I may Cease to Be"
When I have fears that I may cease to be
  Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
  Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starred face,
  Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
  Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creasture of an hour,
  That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
  Of unreflecting love;-- then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

I ought to be looking into literature from around the time of the Great Depression instead of lingering into this era's work, but this book doesn't have a lot of that stuff anyway.  I mean, some of the poets which are recorded to have been born in 1885 are still recorded as alive.
It's amazing to think about that kind of world.  Most of the European countries were still monarchies back then, right?  And what with the Industrial Revolution and Neo-Imperialism... it must've been amazing to be rich.  Not much has changed I guess.
So Rebecca is playing some rather soothing songs on her guitar and I'm about to conk out from exhaustion.  I'm surprised I didn't fall asleep in class again. >.<  'Nite.

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